Monthly Archives: July 2014

I’ve had my fair share of travel snafus the past couple of weeks, from sleeping on the street in Pamplona to only having one minute (!!!) to catch my train from Milan to Vienna after my first train had technical problems.

It’s all a part of the grand adventure, but I’d be lying if I said I haven’t been pitying myself for my transportation complications. Leave it to the strangers I meet to help me realize how lucky I truly am in my life. That’s why I hold this week’s edition of “The Strangers Like Me” very closely to my heart.

When Jeanine and Raph, an adorably loving Dutch couple, walked into my hostel room Monday night, they were full smiles, eager to introduce themselves. After Jeanine asked me for directions to the city center, it wasn’t long that she opened up to me about their story. You see, Jeanine and Raph are both deaf, but that’s not stopping them from traveling, something they both love immensely.

It’s phenomenal to me that Jeanine speaks Dutch, French and English despite her disability when I struggle just to speak Spanish as a second language. Sure, sometimes effectively communicating what train I need at the ticket counter is a challenge, but it pales in comparison to the extra effort Jeanine and Raph must apply when doing the same. (They type up potential questions and detailed requests on little sheets of paper to hand to people just in case others don’t understand what they’re saying.)

Despite their challenges, these two have some of the warmest personalities of anyone I’ve ever met. I just knew I had to feature them in this week’s post. Below, you’ll just find Jeanine’s responses since Raph doesn’t speak much English. At least laughter and hugs know no language barrier. They might have started off as strangers, but then I realized they’re strangers … like me.

Meet Jeanine and Raph from Nijmegen, Netherlands.

Where’d I meet them?
Vienna, Austria

Where else would Jeanine like to go?
When her best friend paid a trip to Australia, she was overcome with envy when hearing how amazing the continent is. A go-getter, she’s now planning a trip to the “Land Down Under” for 2016.

What’s on Jeanine’s bucket list?
She’s sees her bucket list as more of a wish list and wants to go whitewater rafting and buy a house.

What makes her happy?
“Him,” she points to Raph, laughing.

“Why’s that?”

“In the wintertime, we were on the beach in the Netherlands in the evening. He said, ‘Come on, come swimming with me.’ We were fighting, and then I got a teddy bear from him. I felt very lucky. I got two teddy bears from him — no, three. One said ‘Love you’ and another said ‘Hug me.’ Then two weeks ago, he had something for me, asking ‘What do you think?’ A ring. We will get married, but not now. It’s so early.”

“How long have you been dating?”

“For two years. He was my first boyfriend. I was 22 years old.”

What’s it like to travel with a hearing disability?
“My ability to communicate is not good. It is not easy traveling alone — or with a friend.”

“But you still think it’s beautiful?”

“Yes.”

Is it hard for her to learn new languages given her disability?
“French is not easy to speak well. Dutch, I can speak Dutch. It’s easy for me in Germany and Austria.”

Does traveling scare her?
“When I travel, I feel free. When I’m at home in the Netherlands? No. People see that I’m deaf and walk away. I feel lucky to communicate with people here.”

I sit looking out at the Mediterranean lapping playfully before my feet when I spot a single baby pink rose riding its waves. How did it get here?

Logistically speaking, it’s probably from the Marché aux Fleurs, a vibrant market several blocks up from Nice’s beach. But why did it wander several blocks down to the ocean?

Maybe a man finally proposed to his longtime girlfriend, who became so overwhelmed with joy she tossed the delicate flower into the ocean.

Was a lovelorn widow thinking about her husband while making pilgrimage to their favorite vacation spot? Did she place it gingerly in the water out of remembrance, hoping it might find its way to heaven?

Was a teenage couple furiously making out to the French equivalent of John Mayer, rolling around on the rocks? Perhaps they forgot the rose, its petals as alluring and fragile as young love.

Did someone cast the rose aside, swearing off romance and all its tokens?

Perhaps a person placed it there just to make others smile.

If it’s the last of these, it worked. We’ll never know this rose’s origin — just that love and the longing for it will forever have an insurmountable pull as timeless as the sea’s waves.

Ask anyone where they would most like to visit in the world. I’d say Italy is at the top of the list for the majority of the people you ask. What’s not to love? It’s a country meant for the senses.

Taste the bubbling, fresh mozzarella that somehow sneaks its way into so many dishes. Feel the cobblestones beneath your feet. Let your nose be overcome with the scent of the abundant roses and sunflowers. It’s no wonder why many find themselves lingering in this beautiful place.

I was so happy I got to visit Italy for a second time. While I went to Venice, Florence and Rome last year, this go-round I stuck to Florence and Cinque Terre. While I found heaven in Cinque Terre’s hikes, paradise can also be discovered in Florence’s markets and gardens. Take a virtual saunter around one of my favorite places in the whole world:

Gusta Pizza, a block up from Florence’s Ponte Vecchio, is a popular eatery among students studying on exchange in Florence. It has the reputation for serving up some of the best tasting and freshest pizza in all of Italy. With pizzas starting at about €5, sink your teeth into a hearty slice almost too good to be true.

The Renaissance got its start in Florence. It’s easy to see how this city’s beauty inspired the likes of Michelangelo and Botticelli.

Pitti Palace, bought by the incredibly wealthy and powerful Medici family, has many whimsical gardens worth getting lost in.

With many famous pieces of art found right at the heart of the city, some of Florence’s street artists have taken up recreating them entirely with sidewalk chalk.

Riomaggiore is the first of the five Cinque Terre towns when coming from the direction of La Spezia.

A series of posted signs at Pizzeria Batti Batti in Vernazza playfully warn customers not to let the love in Italy’s air overwhelm them when ordering. Tourists from around the world have taken to writing the warning in their native languages.

The region of Cinque Terre has a commissioner of good taste who regulates the colors of the towns’ buildings.

Vernazza, arguably the most picturesque of all Cinque Terre towns, is the only one to have a natural harbor.

Located in Mercato Centrale, this café offers affordable pastas and salads, but go for its roast beef sandwich. The sandwich might look simple, but its meat is succulent.

OK, so you’ve got five hours to kill on your train and no WiFi. No, this isn’t one of those hypothetical life survival scenarios, this is the life you live when backpacking through Europe. When you can only endure so many rounds of solitare, try these top mobile apps to entertain yourself — no internet access required.

Pocket: Getting cultured doesn’t have to end when your train rolls up to the platform. When surfing the web, save news articles and long-form pieces to this handy app. They’ll still be there to read later when you lose your internet.

OverDrive Media Console: Another reading app, OverDrive lets you check out books from your local library to read digitally. Since carting around physical books in your backpack isn’t practical, this app saves space and money.

TripAdvisor City Guides: Scroll through other travelers’ attraction and restaurant recommendations before arriving to your next destination. Bonus: This app is GPS-enabled and will point you directly to top city spots, no 3G required.

Spotify: If your favorite songs change as quickly as the weather, a Spotify Premium account will allow you to make and mix up your own musical playlist that you can take offline.

Duolingo: Find out exactly what locals are saying about you with this language learning app. A heads-up: The app does have offline capabilities, but only about an hour’s worth of lessons can be downloaded at one time.

There are some places that before you even leave them, you miss them. Cinque Terre, a stretch of five coastal towns dotting Italy’s western coast with its impossibly beautiful beaches and colorful homes, is like that. (The regional government even has a commissioner of good taste who regulates the beauty of these buildings.) Though it’s become more become more of a tourist destination since the proliferation of social media, the area still has such a great local feel.

Those living in Cinque Terre have their priorities straight. They sit on their balconies to watch those in wonder below them. They eat the very anchovies they caught earlier that day. They linger in the markets they visit daily, which only sell simple things: cheese, fruit, meat, olive oil — all that’s needed to get by in this world. Though I can only make out the frequent “prego” and “ciao” spoken gregariously among them, I think the locals with their hearty accents are pretty happy here.

As for the children of the region, I hope they realize and remember how lucky they’ve been to live here. Though they won’t be able to recall every one of the many days spent seaside, their towns’ pastel buildings leaning over them lovingly like their mothers, at least some of those memories will remain. For now, they laugh harder and longer than I’ve ever heard children laugh before, their cherub bellies jiggling as they chortle over the magic of the water kissing the sand.

What it means to be loved and to fall in love with it here. Maybe to love like this is to live forever.

Visitors quickly learn through that in order to truly love Cinque Terre, you must love until it hurts. The hikes among the towns always feel like straight vertical summits, despite their proximity to the seaside. You spend at least an hour walking from town to town, but more often than not, it takes at least two hours. Your legs feel as though they can’t move anymore as you hike up hundreds of shaky stone steps winding along the mountainsides of Riomaggiore, Manarola, Corneglia, Vernazza and Monterosso.

You could take one of the regional trains to spare you from the aches of your heels and sweat on your back, but they’re terribly unpredictable and always late. But there’s a reason: Beauty like this isn’t meant to be nor can be savored from a train window whirring past.

Those who hike are rewarded with stunning views, breezes that the salt clings to and an excuse to carbo-load on gelato and pesto gnocchi, which is the region’s specialty.

When you take a dip in the sea after a hike through each town, you simply float. Your feet are unable to touch the water’s bottom. Some say it’s due to the Ligurian Sea’s high salt content, but you know it’s because a place like this turns people into angels, floating in water instead of the clouds.

If you ever need to make a collect call to heaven, this would be the place to do it. So hi, Grandpa. Hi Sammie. It’s been a wonder spending time with you. Thanks for letting the weather hold up and pointing me to the most magnificently smelling roses this side of anywhere. You can’t keep yourself away from gardening even up here, huh Gramps? I’m surprised you managed to keep Sammie from tearing up the bushes before you take her out on her daily walk.

If only I could stay here forever, but I’m thankful to have just a fleeting feel of it. If I’m lucky, I’ll be back one day to visit.

This week’s edition of “The Strangers Like Me” is a Throwback Thursday of sorts. My friend Stephanie is here in Europe for two weeks to visit me. It had been nearly a year since I saw her last.

We were roommates last summer when we both interned in Nashville, Tenn. The rooms we subleased were Craigslist finds, so we didn’t even know each other’s names until she moved in just a couple of days after me. I was going through a tough time the first few weeks we were there, but her spirit lifted me right up.

We spent our days eating popsicles, watching all 10 seasons of “Friends” and going on musical adventures around town. It was one of the most beautiful summers of my life. It’s funny how such close friends all start out as strangers, and isn’t long before you realize they might be strangers, but they’re strangers like me.

Meet Stephanie from West Palm Beach, Fla.

Where’d I meet her?
Nashville, Tenn.

Where else would she like to go?
“If time or money weren’t a thing? Space. The moon. ‘Cause why not?”

What’s the happiest day of her life?
“Have you ever heard the song ‘Ocean’ by John Butler Trio? It might sound weird to say this, but listen to the song, and you’ll understand. I saw them live when we were in Nashville, and he played it and I cried. It was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard in my life. Especially since I had listened to it a million times beforehand, so hearing it live was incredible. That was the closest thing to magic I had ever seen in my life — I said that right after.”

What’s on her bucket list?
She wants to finish getting her pilot’s license.

What’s the weirdest thing she’s ever done or experienced?
“So, it was the night that I hung out with those kids, Monday night. First of all, it was weird because I’m usually not the kind of person to walk up to people and say, ‘I’m going to hang out with you.’ They said, ‘Yeah OK, sit down.’ It was just the weirdest because it ended up being six complete strangers from all different parts of the world. We never ran out of things to talk about. At some point we found a guitar, and every time something happened, we started singing about it and just making up random lines …

It was weird in the best kind of way because they were the kind of people you know for five minutes and they would already respond very lovingly. Within a few hours, there was enough connection to hug each other by. It was just weird how quickly that can happen when you just really connect with people. I didn’t get their numbers. I didn’t get their names. It was literally just ‘OK, goodnight. I’ll never see you again.’ We’ll never have a reason to communicate again, but I enjoyed at the moment and it was like, ‘Have a nice life.’ I don’t know, it was weird.

I thought about trying to get their names or their numbers, but there was a mutual understanding that it would mess it up. It was perfect the way we left it.”

What’s one thing she wishes she could change about the world?
“I think it’s very broad but people’s priorities. I guess I just feel like people complicate things so much, including myself. If they do things that make them happy or do things that make other people happy, it would be so simple. If you want to go somewhere, just go. If you want to eat something, just eat it. If you want to dye your hair neon blue, just do it. No one else should care.”

Boy, did ever get to know the person I interviewed for this week’s installment of “The Strangers Like Me” well. We didn’t stay in the same hostel like the other people I typically interview. Nope, it was more like we slept on the street next to piles of trash, in an ATM vestibule and at a bus stop on a single night in Pamplona. Why? Despite both arriving three hours early to the station, we missed the same bus to Paris that ran from the Spanish town famous for the Running of the Bulls. (Blog post on that festival forthcoming.) That’s what happens when a bus station chooses not to post an up-to-date schedule of departures and hires unhelpful transportation officials.

With hostels all booked up and the bus station closing at midnight, we faced the harsh reality that we would be spending a night roughing it in the streets among all the drunken revelers partying until sunrise. Alone, I would’ve been petrified, but I was so glad to have Ana with me for this experience, having only met her after we both realized our bus left Pamplona without us.

We frantically booked a flight for the next day while in a bar blaring Jennifer Lopez at 2 a.m. We laughed hysterically about our exhaustion. We sang Louis Armstrong’s “What a Wonderful World” to ourselves — ironically, of course. But honestly, despite all headaches, what a wonderful place the world truly is that two strangers could lift each other up in a traveler’s worst-case-scenario situation. She might have been a stranger, but she was a stranger … like me. Here’s to hoping our paths cross again soon, Ana!

Meet Ana from Chicago, Ill.

Where’d I meet her?Pamplona, Spain

Why she’s in Europe?
She’s doing a two-month research program in Madrid, and she was looking for a weekend adventure.

Where else would she like to go?
Somewhere to see the Aurora Borealis — the more exotic the location, the better.

Why does she believe schools should teach students more about empathy?
“It’s not as much as a focus, especially in America where it’s always you, the individual. You work as hard as you can, and it’ll be worth it in the end. I don’t think that the impact that people have on each other is really emphasized anywhere.”

What’s on her bucket list?
She wants to do a poetry slam and paint something large, abstract and colorful that could go on a wall.

What’s the weirdest thing she’s ever done?
“Once I went to the mall with my friend, and we were just having a really bad week. Everything was so hard, and we were like, ‘I just want to get out of here.’ So we went to the mall and went up to random people and asked them, ‘If you had a super power, what would it be?’ They had interesting responses. My favorite one was from a girl who said, ‘I would want to have all the candy in the world. That would be my super power.’ I was like, ‘Would you share it with people?’ And she was like, ‘Nope, no one can have candy except for me.'”

It’s time for another weekly installment of “The Strangers Like Me.” Hostels are a funny thing, you know. For reasons unexplainable, you share a random room in a random hostel in a random city with a random person on this random night. You think to yourself, “What could I possibly have in common with this person?” But you both came from somewhere and you’re both going somewhere. They might be strangers. But then you realize they’re strangers … like me.

Meet Catherine from Yoshkarola, Russia

Where’d I meet her?Barcelona, Spain
Why is she traveling?She just finished up studying abroad in Germany and chose to vacation in Spain.

Where else would she most like to go?England, both London and the countryside
What’s the greatest thing that’s ever happened to her?Attending university in St. Petersburg, Russia, which is 24 hours away from her village by train. Though it’s been a challenge, it’s given her more career opportunities.
What’s on her bucket list?“I know that it’s never happened, but I’ve always dreamed about some specific skills, like (learning how) to control wind. It’s like a fairy tale, a thing that’s never happened — but still, maybe.” (She also wants to go parachuting and visit famous world cities.)
Let her tell you about the first time she saw the ocean.

“Until I was 21 years old, I had never seen the ocean or swam in it. It was in Italy, and it was good weather, and everything was beautiful.”

When you ask 17-year-old Estafania Gonzalez about the time her parents laid her down on a mattress in the middle of the town square for a man dressed as the devil to jump over her, the details might get a little hazy.

“It was good although I can’t remember it because I was a baby,” she coolly tells me in an interview conducted in Spanish.

Maybe it’s for the best that she doesn’t. If it weren’t for the event’s holy Catholic ties, this could be the sort of thing that haunts you for years.

At the El Colacho festival in Castrillo de Murcia, Spain, the discordant clanging of church bells overhead and a single foreboding drum can’t hush the wails of infants dressed in their laciest bonnets and softest onesies.

Parents tenderly coo and cradle, but not much can be done. What’s seen cannot be unseen. After more than seven hours of preparatory festivities leading up to the main event, the babies know what — or rather, who — is coming. It’s time for a dance with the devil.

All participating babies are less than a year old but are wise and wary about what’s in store.

Getting myself into something

Prior to leaving for Europe, when curious friends asked me to rattle off the festivals I’m attending this summer, I’d always say something along the lines of, “Oh you know, Running of the Bulls, La Tomatina, a baby-jumping festival … ” I could never get farther in my list without first clarifying what I meant by “baby-jumping.”

“Like, a festival where a bunch of babies jump?” some would ask.

No, no sillies, that wouldn’t make much sense, now would it? Babies don’t have the motor skills for that.

I only confused them more when I went into further explanation. The only fact I could really offer up is that families in this tiny Spanish village cleanse their children of original sin and protect them against childhood illnesses by having a man dressed as the devil, or “El Colacho,” leap over them. The ceremony falls on the same week as their baptism.

To be honest, I didn’t know much more than that. For a festival that’s been around since 1621, not much information can be gleaned from the web aside from a sparse Wikipedia page and the same wire story.

With a population of about 300 people, Castrillo de Murcia isn’t exactly a happening place. There are no hotels, no markets. The village used to have a school when there were actually enough children who lived there. Nowadays, a book cart will occasionally pop by in the summer to provide some entertainment.

The village is located in northern Spain, about 19 miles away from Burgos as the crow flies. On Corpus Christi Sunday, the only ways to get there are by taxi or by rental car, the latter of which is out of the question for someone who doesn’t know how to drive a stick shift.

Terrified of what I was getting myself into, I obsessively emailed the owner of my Burgos hostel asking if he had any tips about getting to the festival or knew of anyone else going.

Even he had never heard of it and only had so much advice to offer. “We can find you a taxi to get there, but don’t forget you’ll need to get back,” he wrote.

(I envisioned El Colacho to be a testament to my capabilities as a solo-traveler. If I could make to and from Castrillo de Murcia alive, I could survive anywhere else.)

Of course, the hostel owner didn’t know of anyone else going either. That is until an Italian photographer, who was also staying in my hostel, said he was going, too.

I was relieved to have company for the day and not to be slapped with an $136 cab fare for a round-trip ride. I learned later we’d be among only a dozen or so other non-Spaniards attending the event.

From the moment we arrived to the town, I felt as though my presence was a surprise to locals. Wearing jeans, Nike sneakers and mammoth of a camera bag strapped across my body, I clearly didn’t know what I’m getting myself into.

But I don’t have much time to be self-conscious about my laughably textbook American appearance. As black birds loom overhead, I begin to hear the beat of single drum, its pulse stirring whoever could hear it into frantic shuffle out of its way.

Then, a canary yellow figure appears. Its mask features a menacing black smile, furrowed brow and two red circles dotting the cheeks. He has no eyes and holds a whip in his hands. I swear I’ve seen this guy in a nightmare before.

It’s 11:30 a.m. and El Colacho and La Cofradía, or the church’s black-cloaked brotherhood, make one of the first of many saunters around the village.

El Colacho lunges forth, repetitively swatting at those who taunt where it hurts most, and he does not care if takes out a few openly fearful and innocent bystanders either.

Wise village elders scatter out of the way.

Local teenagers with their surging testosterone linger a little longer, pushing their luck and El Colacho’s patience.

But American Amy de la Fuente, whose husband is originally from the village, tells me the taunts are all a part of the fun. She took me under her wing after spotting my reusable water bottle, very American.

“There are certain chants they will say, so basically it’s kind of like, ‘Na-na-nana-nah, you can’t get me,'” de la Fuente says, who lives in Chicago, Ill. but visits Spain with her family every year.

“You see how close you can dance to him and how fast you can run away before he gets you.”

El Colacho spares no one from his whip. Those who tease get especially harsh lashings.

A family affair

As a fellow American, I’m fascinated by de la Fuente’s love for the festival. When her children, now 11 and 9, were babies, she made it very clear to her husband that she, too, wanted them to be jumped by El Colacho.

De la Fuente said the festival provides her the opportunity to be a part of something bigger than herself. She believes traditions can sometimes get watered down in the United States.

“I feel like with my heritage, I didn’t grow up with my mom’s side of the family, so when we went to visit, there were things that we did. But because we didn’t visit all the time, it was just occasional,” she says.

“And with my dad’s side of the family, there wasn’t really any tradition.”

Was she scared before El Colacho jumped over her children? A tiny bit, but her husband’s aunts reassured her that no baby had been injured in all of its history.

In fact, everyone I asked about injuries at the festival was proud to reiterate that fact.

“No, nunca ha pasado.”

“No.”

“No, nunca.”

When I’ve mentioned the festival to those who have never heard of it, they sometimes have scoffed at the seemingly reckless disregard for health and safety regulations.

In recent years, even Pope Benedict XIV has encouraged Spanish Catholic leaders to not become involved with the festival.

But to those who have been partaking for years, the day’s rituals still hold deeply religious meaning entrenched in greater family bonds.

Estephania Gonzalez’s younger brother, 16-year-old Carlos Gonzalez, is finally getting his chance to play devil, a goal held among many of the younger local boys.

It’s his first year dressing up as El Colacho, and he can’t wipe the smile off his face now that he’s among a rank of men wearing the notorious yellow mask.

The opportunity to become El Colacho is a privilege granted by La Cofradía of the church.

Though he can’t jump over the babies until he’s older, he seems content enough running about the streets in a deviant manner while whipping revelers with his hand broom. And he’s is learning what it takes to be a good Colacho, if there can be such a thing:

“Well, he is tall, fast and drinks lots of milk.”

He just has to look to those born before him if he’s in need of pointers. His father, grandfather and great-grandfather have played the role as El Colacho, his mother, Marife Gonzalez, says.

In many ways, I begin to feel as though I’m a part of the Gonzalez family, the de la Fuente family and all the families I speak with.

After learning that I only brought a bag of peanuts to satiate my growling stomach, Amy de la Fuente invites me into her father-in-law’s home to make me a sandwich.

Though I’m sure she would say a croissant filled with cold cuts and cheese is nothing, it’s the closest I’ve gotten to home-cooked meal in the five weeks I’ve been traveling. In this moment, it tastes like the best sandwich I’ve ever eaten.

And as my tongue messily fumbles over my interview questions, those I converse with in Spanish with answered me with a great amount of patience despite the language barrier.

El salto

Following the day’s earlier pageantry and church service, the village settles down for a mid-afternoon siesta, and I retreat to the fleeting shade to wait three hours for the festivities to continue.

All at once, Castrillo de Murcia springs to life again as women hang their finest linens outside their balconies and adorn them with roses. Originally a pagan festival, the people have sought to make it a more consecrated, Catholic one.

Four mattresses dressed in pastel sheets appear in the town square, and the crowd is abuzz with excitement. Soon, the babies are set in their places. They can wiggle all they want, but they won’t get far.

After taking pictures with their children to commemorate the moment, parents retreat to the sidelines with the exception of a couple of mothers who can’t will their bodies to leave the bedside of their babies.

After another few beats of a drum, quiet falls over the crowd. Before your mind can process that the jump, known as “El salto,” is about to happen, it does.

Two colachos this time take running leaps from the staircase descending from the churchyard, heading right towards the babies. Their sneakers, a blur against the pavement. Their masks, off — thank God.

It is believed that as the colachos make mighty leap after leap, so do the evil spirits from the souls of the babies.

In order to jump, the man must be from the village or married to a woman from the village.

There aren’t any gasps from the crowd, only cheers with every successful jump. Within seconds, it’s over. Make that 393 years without an injury. To anyone who comes to this festival year after year, it comes as no surprise.

Girls recently confirmed into the church throw petals over the babies, and the priest blesses each of them.

To the American eye, the festival seems strange, yes. But for the people of Castrillo de Murcia, El Colacho is just a day in the life, a day that recognizes just how fleeting, sacred — and yes, odd — this very life can be.

It’s time for another weekly installment of “The Strangers Like Me,” but this week comes with a twist. I’ve met so many interesting people in Barcelona, so choosing a person to profile was a challenge. But as it turns out, serendipity had a very specific person in mind I should interview.

On Wednesday, my friend Gabriella and I trekked up to Antoni Gaudí’s whimsical dream of a place, Parc Güel, where we met Maryam, a dental student at the University of Pittsburgh. Due to some ticketing issues and time constraints, Gabriella and I couldn’t actually go inside the main part of the park. (No worries, we’re saving it for another day.) This meant we had to quickly bid farewell to our new friend after only having met her just moments before.

A few hours and a couple of pit stops later, I found myself getting off at the same Metro stop as Maryam on the way back to my hostel! For city with 1.62 million people with a big tourist pull, what are the chances?

Now generally, I only interview the strangers-turned-friends I meet in hostels, but rules are meant to be broken. Afterall, Maryam is traveler too and a pretty cool one at that. We both came from somewhere and we’re both going somewhere. She might have been a stranger. But then I realized she’s a stranger … like me.

Meet Maryam from Dallas, Texas

Where’d I meet her?Barcelona, Spain

Why is she traveling?
Having just finished up her second year of dental school, she doesn’t get a lot of free time. Now that she’s on a month-long break, the longest she’s had in a while, Maryam decided to travel all over Europe instead of returning home to Texas.

Where else would she most like to go?
Amsterdam, Netherlands

Where is she happiest?“I don’t think it’s like actually a place that I’m happiest. It’s more like the people around me and the things that I’m doing that make me really happy. When I was younger, my home, Dallas, used to be my happiest place ever, but then I moved around and went to college, and I went to grad school. Everywhere I go and the people I meet, that becomes my new happy place, if that makes sense. My happy place is really anywhere that I’m happy.”

What’s on her bucket list?“Well, I feel like people’s bucket lists are huge things like skydiving, which is also on (my) list and ziplining. I want to zipline in a really amazing, beautiful place. But another thing that is small but I really want to do — because I’ve always lived in big cities — I want go somewhere where there are no lights and stargaze. I just want to spend the whole night stargazing because I love stars and I never get to see them that well at night. It’s so small, but I’ve always wanted to do it.”

Let her tell you about her family’s unlucky luggage.“Well, this doesn’t happen to me anymore, but I’ve been traveling since I was younger to Pakistan because my grandma and my other family lives there and other places. Every time we would travel, every single time, our luggage would get lost. No matter what. We plan for it, like, ‘Our luggage is going to get lost.’ Every time I travel with my mom and my brother together as a family, our luggage gets lost.”